Report by Steve Tucker
The Image II tournament at SLSL, June 14 2008. What a great experience. This was only my second tournament outside of my club and it was a lot of fun.
In the beginning of the year I made my mind up to attend 2 -3 tournaments outside of So Cal. With the nationals being in Boise and having always wanted to play against my fellow westerners, this was a no brainier. After having gone to Maryland 18 months ago and having such a fantastic time, I really wanted to make a return to this tourney (of course I also would get to visit my Bro and family!) or possible an SCC tourney. But, also, I wanted to meet some new players. Having read about the wonderfully successful Nationals tournament in St. Louis in 2007 and reading some of their posts, I realized the guys at SLSL were a lot of fun and I just had to meet them. Plus, other players from other regions would be attending.
So, the tourney. Jeff Drake picks me up at the airport Friday. Jeff was my transportation and housing, I really, really need to thank him again. We get together Friday night at Mitch Morice's house where I go to meet most of the crew from SLSL, Lewis Bacon, Brian King and their boys from down south and Steve Laskey from Ohio. Fun night of food, drink, jokes and playing a shuffle board type of game with Subbuteo figures, which I forget the name of. I need to ask the guy's. Thanks to Mitch for hosting this gathering. Next morning, we head to Brad DeMunbrun’s for the tourney. Brad’s a great host, always wears a smile (and a joke!) and willing to do whatever he can to make you feel at home. So, we setup the pitches, the fixture list gets created and off we go. 7 guys in one conference bracket, 8 in the other. Everyone plays everyone in their conference bracket. Top four in each conference bracket go to the next round, winner of each bracket plays for the championship.
The night before I was able to flick some of Jeff's Image II bases, but now was my first time to actually play a game with them. It was a challenge, but each game I felt I got a little better with them. They say you can curl with these bases and they are not kidding. Problem for me was to stop curling on every flick! We were also using the small keepers, you just felt if you get it on net, you could score against this keeper, but it was harder then that. I really enjoyed playing with this bases, it was a flash back to my youth, and they looked real good. Jeff did a fantastic job painting them.
If I remember correctly I was 5 - 2 in the bracket, 1 loss being in a shootout. Then I won my quarter final match 1 - 0 (against Jon Freebersyser who beat in the first game of the day in a shootout, a real talent at 20-odd years old) and then lost in the Semi's to Jeff on a shootout 4 -3. Every game I played (win or lose) was a challenge with excellent sportsmanship (very important to me) which made for some very exciting Subbuteo in my opinion. Watching a tourney final is always exciting and the match between Steve and Jeff was no different, congrats to both players. All in all, a great time played by a cool bunch of guys. Special thanks to Jeff, Brad and Mitch for hosting and housing. Hopefully these guys (all 15) can make it our way one day!
Steve Tucker (left) v Jon Freebersyser
Results
Quarter final |
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Los Angeles Aztecs (Steve Tucker) | 1 | v | 0 | Tampa Bay Rowdies (Jon Freebersyser) |
Semi final |
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Colorado Caribous (Jeff Drake) | 0 | v | 0 | Los Angeles Aztecs (Steve Tucker) |
| Colorado win shoot out 4-3 | ||||